Film Categories: science/medicine

  • Lost Hope, Lost Dreams

    A lyrical montage paralleling the romantic purity of nature with the emotional purity of love. A visual abstraction of reflections on love, hopes, dreams, and the reality of an HIV test.

  • Matter of Expectations, A

    “A Matter of Expectations” depicts the life circumstances of women living in the Runnymede Hospital, a chronic care facility in Toronto. Longer life spans, low incomes, and a lack of housing alternatives force many women to be dependent on the health care system. This film surveys the problems confronting older women through interviews in which women discuss their feelings about aging, institutional life, the care they receive, and dying. Footage of life in the hospital with accompanying voice-overs presents a balanced view of the problematic position of older women in the 1980s.

  • Monarch

    The poetic story of a butterfly’s life from his beginnings in a meadow, through his metamorphosis and his 3000 mile journey to the enchanted forest where Monarchs have gathered for centuries. The exceptional photography and the ethereal flute music by Paul Horn intensify the rainbow ballet of the Monarch’s life.

  • Mondrian Voor Rebecca

    I’m very certain it’s about the 30 km dyke in the north of Holland, the “Afsluitdijk.” I’m sure that the lines, the colours and the horizon figure heavy into grids, squares and rectangles. I’m positive it’s about being on an exquisite land/water edge and I’m assured it involves Rebecca, whom I barely know, and Mondrian, whom I barely know, and windmills. So I’m decided that much that is beautiful of Holland, apart from Rebecca, lies in the instinct that has refined the elements, and has become Science – not the other way around. (JG)

  • As We Are

    A documentary about autistic children and the difficult and often trying process of their education. While attending special art classes in a small well-equipped studio, several children are seen during the delicate and inspired moments of learning self-discovery. Here the teachers meet, with great inventiveness and sensitivity, some of the special challenges posed by autistic children and achieve some moving breakthroughs.

  • Name Your Poison It’s a Scream Channel No. 5

    A nasty little movie about violation and contamination – physical, geographical and ideological. The sound, built and mixed on a 4-track cassette recorder, was culled from shortwave radio, Italian B-movies, and a perfume advertisement. Chernobyl, AIDS, and sexual assault in a lament for our times.

  • Nice Step to Take, A

    The radical change from an institutional residence to an apartment complex promoting independence sets the stage for this film about the people at Bellwoods Park House in Toronto. Founded in 1967 by the Adult Cerebral Palsy Institute, Bellwoods is one of the first residences for the disabled in North America. This film puts a face on people too often masked by our perception of disability. Produced for The Adult Cerebral Palsy Institute of Metro Toronto.

  • Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes

    With his camera, Brakhage enters one of the forbidden, terrific locations of our culture, the autopsy room. “This last is a process that requires a witness; and what ‘idea’ may finally have inserted itself into the sensible world we can scarcely guess, for the camera would seem the perfect eidetic witness, staring with perfect compassion where we can scarcely bear to glance” (Hollis Frampton).

  • Nursing History

    “Nursing History” began as an inquiry into the nature of woman’s work, specifically the relationship between woman’s work as wives and mothers, and woman’s work as nurses. Having worked as a nurse for ten years, I decided to locate this inquiry historically, within my own past as represented in the home movies that, for the most part, my father had made and that stand as a record of our family’s collective history. From 1968-1984, 60 minutes worth of history, on Super 8 film, were recorded. Out of this footage there were forty minutes of weddings and in each case it…

  • Paper Age and Ancient Flight, The

    It was in Egypt 4000 years ago when mankind first developed the aircraft. Using the pyramids as launch pads, ancient civilizations had mastered the air before the invention of the wheel. For over a thousand years cultures around the world used papyrus, or paper, to construct simple yet effective means to travel through air. Is it possible that this age of paper thrived for so long, but has remained virtually unnoticed? In in-depth interviews, William Deiches describes how he rediscovered this ancient technology. While researching pyramid contruction, he stumbled unexpectedly onto secret plans for hot air balloons, gliders and hang…